Chapter 2: Kit learns about New Englanders, Part I

Kit is incredibly bored in this chapter. The Dolphin spends nine days getting from Saybrook to Wethersfield, a distance roughly equal to how far current Connecticut residents will drive to get to a mall.

But this is the second chapter of the book, so the reader's not allowed to be bored or worn out by the whole "are we there yet" thing. So we get occasional bouts of her frustration -- and the sailors' lack of it -- mixed with character development and further spinning of plot threads.

The Cruffs aren't speaking to Kit (which, when you think about what a small space they were occupying, is a pretty impressive feat), but she's got an eye on them, and she doesn't like what she sees.

"Once or twice she had seen the father furtively slip child an extra morsel from his but he was plainly too spineless to stand up for her against shrew of a wife."

She's also got her eye on John Holbrook

"There he sat, hour after hour, so intent that often his lips moved, and two spots of color burned in his pale cheeks, as though some secret excitement sprang from the pages."

but there's a different kind of interest there.

"Kit would make sure that his eyes, blinking half blindly from his book, would focus on her gay, silk-clad figure nearby."

Eventually Kit decides that John is the victim of "an appallingly dull history," but as he's the only person on the ship who's willing to hang out with her, they strike up a friendship of sorts. Their conversation is essentially an ongoing culture clash. Kit is surprised John talks openly about his inability to afford Harvard tuition (though we get a hint of Kit's own money issues there), and John is scandalized that Kit's extensive reading has consisted almost entirely of books Puritans disapprove of. "There are no such books in Saybrook," he tells her.

These conversations also give Speare a chance to throw in some backstory, as Kit shares what she knows of the aunt she's on her way to live with.

"Her name is Rachel, and she was charming and gay, and they said she could have had her pick of any man in her father's regiment. But instead she fell in love with a Puritan and ran away to America without her father's blessing."

To which John suggests that, well, things are different in the colonies: "Kit was aware again of that intangible warning she could not interpret."

Returning for a moment to the subject of people avoiding each other on the ship: Nat Eaton is absent for all Kit's conversations with John, but eventually he decides to chat with her again -- which is not a success.

Kit complains about the lingering smell of horses, a reminder of the ship's previous cargo. Nat not only objects to any sort of criticism of the Dolphin, he also points out that the the alternative cargo was slaves, which he and his father aren't going to touch.

"Yes, to our shame! Mostly down Virginia way. But there are plenty of fine folk like you here in New England who'll pay a fat price for black flesh without asking any questions about how it got here. If my father would consent to bring back just one load of slaves we would have had our new ketch by this summer. But we Eatons, we're almighty proud that our ship has a good honest stink of horses!"

This is the first mention of Kit's attitude toward slavery, something that's going to appear several more times -- and it's an issue that's never actually dealt with over the course of the story.

And then they're in Wethersfield. Which, after all Kit's anticipation, is about what the reader expects:

"This was Wethersfield! Just a narrow sandy stretch of shoreline, a few piles sunk in the river with rough planking for a platform."

But there's a bigger problem, one that only emerges when Captain Eaton wonders why Kit's relatives haven't come to meet the ship: This whole moving-in-with-the-family thing wasn't actually a mutual decision. The Wood family has no idea their niece has left Barbados.

The captain's not too happy about this, grumbling about how he takes no responsibility for her. But Kit's bigger concern, as the captain drafts some of his men to carry her seven trunks to her uncle's house, is this:

"Why should Nat, who had carefully been somewhere else during the whole of the last nine days, have to be so handy at just this moment?"

Tidbit: The Many Faces of George Washington

The Many Faces of George Washington, Carla Killough McClafferty. (Carolrhoda, 4/2011)

Gilbert Stuart's portraits of George Washington have left most Americans with a definite image of the first president: austere, dignified, and forever elderly. The Many Faces of George Washington tells the story of the team of historians and artists who have given the world new images of the icon.

The book follow the team's creation of three life-size statues of Washington that show him as a young surveyor, the famous general, and the first president. To build the figures, the team relies on everything from existing images to 3D skeletal models -- and, as the book's copious photo illustrations make clear, lots of painstaking - though fascinating -- work.

(Review copy provided by publisher; text shamelessly cribbed from my Cybils blurb.)

Chapter 1: We begin our journey

The Witch of Blackbird Pond. One of my favorites, but it's not like I dug it out of a slush pile somewhere. Elizabeth George Speare won the 1959 Newbery Medal,¹ so I'm pretty sure the librarians thought it was rather good too.

So for this series, we're not just going to talk about the plot, we're going to look at what Speare did to make this the most distinguished book for children of its year.

(And then at the end we're going to look at what makes it a children's book in the first place, or what doesn't. Stay tuned.)

My plan is for these posts to go up every Wednesday, which means the discussion will last well into the warmer months,² but knowing my blogging habits, I'm not making any promises, y'know?

Onward.

Here's the opening line of the book:

"On a morning in mid-April, 1687, the brigantine Dolphin left the open sea, sailed briskly across the Sound to the wide mouth of the Connecticut River and into Saybrook harbor."

Speare wasn't playing the must-have-dramatic-hook line, but it's effective enough, since we're not left wondering about the where and when. It's historical fiction, and it's up-front about that.

We meet two characters straight off: protagonist Kit Tyler, and "Nathaniel Eaton, first mate, but his mother called him Nat."

Guess who's gonna play an important role in the story?

That's true for many of the characters introduced in the first few pages, but not all of them -- Mistress Eaton, for instance, leaves the ship at Wethersfield, and although she's mentioned in passing, she's never onstage again.

Speaking of Wethersfield:

"Kit hesitated. She didn't want to admit how disappointing she found this first glimpse of America."

I was a Connecticut girl for almost two decades. I love many things about the state. Beaches, however, are not something we do well. I expect that was even more true 300-plus years ago. However, we get a hint that things are not all bad in the New World:

"Kit glanced again at the forbidding shore. She could see nothing about it to put such a twinkle of anticipation in anyone's eye. Could there be some charm that was not visible from out here in the harbor?"

Once Kit is on dry land for the first time in five weeks, we get another first. Start counting the number of times "Sir Francis Tyler's granddaughter" shows up in the text.

"Embarrassment was a new sensation for Kit. No one on the island had ever presumed to stare like that at Sir Francis Tyler's granddaughter."

Kit's left her home of Barbados for a country where, to the best of her knowledge, no one has even heard of Sir Francis Tyler, but she completely defines herself through her paternal lineage. Which is sure to go over well when she moves in with her mother's relatives, no?

In the course of returning to the boat, Kit manages to get herself in a bit of trouble by jumping overboard to rescue the doll dropped by her fellow passenger Prudence Cruff. Prudence's mother, Goodwife Cruff, doesn't much want anyone getting in the way of her child-rearing (otherwise known as child abuse), and all the New Englanders are put out to see that Kit not only acts on her own when both the captain and Goodwife Cruff are willing to abandon the doll, but also swims. Which at least some of them consider evidence of witchcraft.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is what we call "foreshadowing."

Before the chapter ends, we meet one more key character: "I am John Holbrook, bound for Wethersfield, which I learn is your destination as well."

We'll learn more about John as the story progresses, but that first line gives a fairly good picture of him. Yes, Kit was first drawn to him because he smiled at her when everyone else was glaring, but there's a certain -- stiffness? stodginess? something -- about him.

John and Kit have a bit of an argument about the relative merits of Barbados and Puritanism, and we get another glimpse of how just maybe Kit doesn't know what she's gotten herself into.

¹ For everyone keeping track, this was Speare's first win. She also got the medal in 1962 for The Bronze Bow, and took a silver sticker in 1984 for The Sign of the Beaver.
² The problem with leaving WBUR on all day at the store was the number of times we had to listen to the anchor inform us that today's weather was "bitterly cold." Yes, it was.^3
3 Shut up, Midwesterners. For us soft New England urbanites, it totally was.

Chapter 38: Life Moves On

Anne quickly realizes that she can't leave Marilla alone -- which is a problem, since she was planning to head off to Redmond College.

"He says that if I give up all reading and sewing entirely and any kind of work that strains the eyes, and if I'm careful not to cry, and if I wear the glasses he's given me he thinks my eyes may not get any worse and my headaches will be cured. But if I don't he says I'll certainly be stone-blind in six months."

So she decides to stay home, and get a teaching job on the island.

"I'm just as ambitious as ever. Only, I've changed the object of my ambitions."

And go to school. Overachiever.

"'But I'm going to study Latin and Greek just the same, Mrs. Lynde," said Anne laughing. "I'm going to take my Arts course right here at Green Gables, and study everything that I would at college.'"

She's planning on teaching in a school near Avonlea, and getting home on the weekends -- but Gilbert Blythe has other plans, as Rachel Lynde is happy to inform everyone.

"But as soon as Gilbert heard that you had applied for it he went to them—they had a business meeting at the school last night, you know—and told them that he withdrew his application, and suggested that they accept yours."

Which is something Anne was hardly expecting. And that's what it takes for her to remove her head from somewhere unmentionable and do something about their relationship.

"It was Gilbert, and the whistle died on his lips as he recognized Anne. He lifted his cap courteously, but he would have passed on in silence, if Anne had not stopped and held out her hand."

"I forgave you that day by the pond landing, although I didn't know it. What a stubborn little goose I was. I've been—I may as well make a complete confession—I've been sorry ever since."

"We were born to be good friends, Anne."

All together, now: sigh.

Chapter 37: Handkerchiefs at the Ready

Okay, this chapter? Sob central.

Matthew dies, people. Matthew dies.

"It was long before Anne could love the sight or odor of white narcissus again"

And deservedly so.

The thing is, I like Kevin Sullivan's version of this much better. Montgomery has Matthew collapsing after receiving word that all his savings have been wiped out. That just seems too -- I don't know, prosaic, maybe? As opposed to the movie version, where Matthew just goes on as he always has, quietly working the farm and taking care of Anne, right up to the end.

Cue the sobs:

"For the first time shy, quiet Matthew Cuthbert was a person of central importance; the white majesty of death had fallen on him and set him apart as one crowned."

"There were flowers about him—sweet old-fashioned flowers which his mother had planted in the homestead garden in her bridal days and for which Matthew had always had a secret, wordless love."

"Anne hoped that the tears would come in solitude."

And now that she's all alone except for Anne, the last bit of Marilla's reserve cracks, and she admits how much she really cares.

"'We've got each other, Anne. I don't know what I'd do if you weren't here—if you'd never come. Oh, Anne, I know I've been kind of strict and harsh with you maybe—but you mustn't think I didn't love you as well as Matthew did, for all that. I want to tell you now when I can. It's never been easy for me to say things out of my heart, but at times like this it's easier. I love you as dear as if you were my own flesh and blood and you've been my joy and comfort ever since you came to Green Gables.'"

But then slowly, eventually, they can begin to think of other things. And some of them are quite funny:

"'Josie is a Pye,' said Marilla sharply, 'so she can't help being disagreeable. I suppose people of that kind serve some useful purpose in society, but I must say I don't know what it is any more than I know the use of thistles. Is Josie going to teach?'"

And some are surprising, adding a whole new dimension to the not-romance between Anne and Gilbert.

"John Blythe was a nice boy. We used to be real good friends, he and I. People called him my beau."

But, oh, Matthew. Sigh.

Chapter 36: Stage-Setting

Something pretty monumental happens to Anne in this chapter: She wins the Avery Scholarship, which will cover her tuition for a bachelor's degree at Redmond College. (Queens just offers a teaching certificate, which Anne finished up in one year.)

So things are good. And the school year's over, which means Anne's back at Green Gables, where she belongs.

Cue the impending doom soundtrack.

Look, if you've read the book, you know what's coming. So let's just look at a couple of the lines Montgomery uses to set us up for the next chapter.

"'Reckon you're glad we kept her, Marilla?' whispered Matthew, speaking for the first time since he had entered the hall, when Anne had finished her essay."

"'Marilla," she said hesitatingly when he had gone out, "is Matthew quite well?'"

"'If I had been the boy you sent for,' said Anne wistfully, 'I'd be able to help you so much now and spare you in a hundred ways. I could find it in my heart to wish I had been, just for that.'"

"It's only that I'm getting old, Anne, and keep forgetting it."

"It was the last night before sorrow touched her life; and no life is ever quite the same again when once that cold, sanctifying touch has been laid upon it."

Chapter 35: Guess Who Takes Center Stage

This is a short chapter, and it's very much about one person who's suddenly on Anne's mind quite a lot.

"She could not help thinking, too, that it would be very pleasant to have such a friend as Gilbert to jest and chatter with and exchange ideas about books and studies and ambitions. Gilbert had ambitions, she knew, and Ruby Gillis did not seem the sort of person with whom such could be profitably discussed."

Montgomery makes a point of emphasizing that this isn't a romance; Anne's got her own ideas about that, and Gilbert still doesn't make the cut. But she's not looking for romance right now.

"There was no silly sentiment in Anne's ideas concerning Gilbert. Boys were to her, when she thought about them at all, merely possible good comrades. If she and Gilbert had been friends she would not have cared how many other friends he had nor with whom he walked. She had a genius for friendship; girl friends she had in plenty; but she had a vague consciousness that masculine friendship might also be a good thing to round out one's conceptions of companionship and furnish broader standpoints of judgment and comparison."

And as a result, she's gotten just a bit more down-to-earth about her academic pursuits.

"Anne no longer wished to win for the sake of defeating Gilbert; rather, for the proud consciousness of a well-won victory over a worthy foeman. It would be worth while to win, but she no longer thought life would be insupportable if she did not."